Regulating International Labour Recruitment in the Domestic Work Sector

Regulating International Labour Recruitment in the Domestic Work Sector: A Review of key issues, challenges and opportunities. Based on a report elaborated by Leanne Melnyk.

Resource Type

Research reports, working paper

Details

Summary

This brief on international labour recruitment is part of a series on issues and approaches to promoting decent work for domestic workers. The work aims to highlight the specific needs and vulnerabilities of migrant domestic workers during the recruitment process and main issues and challenges as well as innovative practices for improving regulation of international recruitment.in the domestic work sector.

There are 67 million domestic workers employed in private households across the globe. Approximately 11.5 million of these are international migrants, drawn to countries where there is a demand for private care services.

In many regions labour recruiters, both public and private, assist families and migrant domestic workers with job matching and immigration formalities. While labour recruiters, when properly regulated can provide important services, there have also been an increasing number of reports about the exploitation and abuse of migrant domestic workers by unscrupulous private employment agencies (PrEAs) and informal agents.

Exploitative practices include deception (primarily about working and living conditions and the type of employment); charging unauthorized fees to workers; retention of identity documents with the aim to control jobseekers and workers; threats and intimidation including verbal and psychological abuse (often when a worker wants to leave the employment situation); wage retention; interferences with domestic workers’ privacy; and recruitment of children below working age.

Labour recruitment agencies are particularly prevalent regarding migration within Asia, and from Asia and Africa to the middle East, where migration flows for domestic work are largely circular with temporary employment tied to a specific employer.

Many temporary labour migration programs involving “low-skilled” workers are based in structural and income inequalities between developing and developed economies.

Migrant domestic workers (MDWs) are considered to be especially vulnerable to exploitation due to a variety of factors including precarious working conditions, migrant status, long-standing gender inequalities and cultural devaluations of care-based work.